Stevie Spiteful’s Asbestos Hypocrisy, Johnny-Boy Charest, Would Be Modern Day Shylock, Their Enablers And Canadacausescancer.ca

Stevie Spiteful, as you all know by now, boys ‘n’ girls, still refuses to add asbestos to the list of hazardous materials at the Rotterdam Convention.  To be specific, as Pogge pointed out earlier, according to the article from Mia Rabson,

Substances on the list are not banned but countries exporting them must provide written warnings to the importing nation about their hazards and include information on how to safely handle them. … To date Canada has blocked repeated recommendations by the convention’s Chemical Review Committee to add chrysotile asbestos to the list.

Ya get that? Stevie Spiteful can’t even be bothered to support putting warning labels with instructions on handling Chrysotile asbestos with caution when exporting this shit.  Not that I buy that there is any safe way to handle Chrysotile asbestos in any shape or form, but Stevie Spiteful, along with Johnny-Boy Charest, and yes, even some labour unions (though there are unions who have recanted since, though, not unions who represent asbestos miners) and workers from the  town of Asbestos who support this idiotic claim, do.  So Stevie, if you believe your idiotic lobbyists who swear up and down that there is a ‘safe’ way to handle asbestos, why not vote to add asbestos to the list?

Furthermore,  I really don’t know how Stevie said the following with a straight face when he campaigned in la belle province last April.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper commented during an April campaign visit to Quebec that the Canadian government will not place domestic industry in a position to be discriminated against in countries where asbestos use is still permitted.

Discrimination against a known carcinogen, hmm.  Didn’t he discriminate against that very product when he went to the trouble and expense of having it removed from his home and from parliament recently?

For those who don’t know, there is a United Nations vote on Monday, June 20 to include chrysotile asbestos on the list of the Rotterdam Convention.  I had received an email from a reader, telling me about a  group of comedians who call themselves Canadacausescancer.ca, which has called upon Stevie spiteful to support this vote or have the asbestos put right re-installed back into his home.

“Mr. Harper’s stance on asbestos is morally bankrupt. Hypocrisy this blatant would be hilarious if it weren’t also deadly,” says Sean Devlin, one of the comedians responsible for the campaign.

Yes, indeed.  They have some home renovators.  Allow me to introduce to you home renovating specialist, Mr. Chris O’Tile and his trusty sidekick, Jacques. Don’t worry about Jacques, he’s just naturally crotchety.  They can do everything from keeping your hot tub hot- to keeping windows green.  Relax, enjoy their handy work, below.

In that video you just saw above, the comedian, Lauren Cochrane, who played decorator, Chrystal Tile has a personal connection to the asbestos issue. Her grandfather, who was a plumber, died of asbestosis, another respiratory illness caused by exposure to asbestos.

And yes, below is a ‘safe’ way to ‘protect’ yourself when exposed to asbestos.

On  a serious note, though.   Stevie would like to continue exporting this poisonous shit to third world countries, like India; the only countries that still allow the import of asbestos; countries with no social safety nets and little or no labour standards to speak of. In India, workers who handle asbestos have little more than that bandana you saw in the last video to protect themselves; they use cotton surgical masks.  How many of them are sick with mesothelioma?

Over in the town of asbestos, where Johnny-boy Charest has agreed to that 58 million dollar loan guarantee to run and expand the Jeffrey mine in Asbestos, how many are sick there as compared to the rest of La Belle Province? Rest of Canada? How many more are sick in Thetford Mines? According to NDP MP, Pat Martin, the amount of asbestos-related illnesses in Quebec’s asbestos mining region are among the highest worldwide.  One must remember that Johnny-Boy and Stevie Spiteful both have enablers, as mentioned above, they would be labour unions and workers themselves. Both had agreed to starvation deals not that long ago.  That’s not all:

Just what kind of jobs are they protecting? The current and only mine is in bankruptcy protection and its employees have had their wages cut virtually in half. Not a single private investor would put a dime into the new mine and workers were forced to sign a deal putting aside 10 per cent of their already slashed wages into a fund to repay the government $10 million if the mine fails. The National Asbestos Union president, Rodrigue Chartier, said mine president, Bernard Coulombe, used fear tactics to get the workers to sign a deal with a “starvation wage” of $15.93 an hour for young workers.

This is the humiliating agreement Quebec labour thinks is worth defending — against the lives of thousands of Indian and other developing country workers. The new mine will last 25 years, which means another generation of workers in the developing world will suffer because of government and union collusion in lying about the “safety” of asbestos.

Can you imagine? Workers themselves, forced to put aside 10% of their wages,  already cut, to pay back the Quebec government, should the mine fail, and I’m pretty sure it will.  Why wouldn’t Johnny-Boy sign on to a loan guarantee like that?

Why can’t the town come up with a new industry(ies) to create new and different jobs? Safer jobs?  Jobs where they’re not held by the noose of the Quebec government of anyone else for that matter?  I digress, but I felt that I should get this point out there.  Wouldn’t that make Johnny-Boy Charest a would-be modern day Shylock?

Before I get back to the topic at hand, I should just add that more than likely, the Parti-Quebecois and Francois Legault and his Coalition pour l’Avenir du Quebec (not a party yet, but Legault has announced that he intends to turn his movement into one) would probably not cancel the loan guarantee and would probably cowtow to the Chrysotile institute as well.  Why? Gawd only knows. It’s just one riding in reality. They should take notes, though. For the Harpercons, the luv affair with asbestos helped only Christian Paradis in Megantic-L’Erable, and that was just one reason (there were other unrelated reasons, such as pork barreling in the town of Lac Megantic). Imagine, all this insanity over one riding, federally and provincially.  Even for one riding, they would pander for votes from an electorate who insist on keeping an industry, come hell or high water, that would surely kill them in a long and miserable illness, leading to death.

The NDP took most of the seats in La Belle Province and they are adamantly against the export of asbestos. They have the backing of health experts across the country. If the NDP were to lose most of their Quebec seats in the next federal election, rest assured, boys ‘n’ girls, it most certainly won’t be because of their strong stance against asbestos production and exports.

Back to the topic at hand, Canadacausescancer.ca also has a petition. Please sign your name to it and tweet and facebook to get Stevie to support the UN vote to add chryotile asbestos to the Rotterdam convention.